"A good name is better than precious ointment."--_The Bible_.
"And in its light the Star of Love aglow,
Shone with her beacon fire, a guide
and guardian still."--_Dante's Inferno_.
In the middle of the night Leonie lay face downwards upon her bed in
the great Eastern Hotel.
All the luggage she had brought with her from England was stacked
around the small room, and even in the dressing-room; in fact, there
was that unfinished, unpacked air about the whole place which is
inseparable from anyone in India who is in the throes of going home.
She had returned on the wings of panic from Benares, only to find that
the gossip which had been circulated about her had arrived well in
advance; and that, like crows after a dust cart, what remained of the
city's female population was busy pulling her to a thousand pieces with
claws and beaks sharpened by the million irritations of the hot weather.
A dignified bearer had salaamed gravely, and handed her a chit upon her
arrival at the bungalow, where her friend was braving the pestilence of
the hot weather in comradeship with her husband, who, in the secret
places of his heart, wished to goodness she had gone to the hills with
the rest of 'em.
Her luggage, the letter stated, had been shifted to the hotel, where a
room had been taken for her, and there would, it seemed, be plenty of
accommodation on the _City of Sparta_ which would be sailing in three
weeks' time for home.
And that was all!
It is wise in the hot weather to pull the purdah, which is the Indian
way of saying to shut the door, in the face of a young and unattached
girl with a tawny head and opalescent eyes; especially if the dust has
long been undisturbed upon the threshold of the secret places of the
male heart supposed to be entirely in your keeping.
For days she had remained in her room, not daring to face the curious
glances, and subdued whispers, of the few visitors to be met with in
the marble desolation of the front hall; and not for worlds would she
have used the telephone for fear of the direct snub the wire would
surely have transmitted.
Food she hardly touched; sleep she did, heavily, waking dull and
unrefreshed; and for hours she would sit and stare into the corners, or
peer over her shoulder into the stifling shadows, or study her face in
the mirror, wondering if her strange eyes were the eyes of a mad woman.
The bearer had caused her long moments of worry.
The morning after her arrival at the hotel, instead of the little,
dusky, nimble, monkey-eyed man of the night before, there had entered
one, tall and dignified, who had cleared a space on the table beside
her bed, deposited a bunch of flowers and the _chotar hazri_, or early
tea, and raising his hand to his turban had departed.
Quite a usual procedure! But wakeful Leonie, who had indifferently
watched him through the mosquito curtain and from under the pillow
frill into which she had burrowed her head, frowned when something
familiar in the man or his movements had particularly attracted her
attention.
Most natives look alike to the newcomer in India, but she frowned again
as she chewed the crust of buttered toast and racked her brain
fruitlessly for a clue.
One by one she went over each city and place she had visited, each
railway journey she had made, each hotel she had stayed in. Then had
poured out a cup of tea and given it up.
Having fruitlessly worried over this seemingly insignificant detail of
an Indian day's routine, she had impatiently countermanded the early
tea for the following mornings, and had indifferently left the really
lovely flowers which came up regularly on every tray, to the fantastic
arranging of the little dusky man who looked at her like a wistful
monkey, and slipped nimbly about the room in her service; and who,
likewise, rejoiced greatly over certain backsheesch which he, with the
joy the native has in all intrigue, imagined to be the outcome of love.
I wonder if Europeans in India know with what interest their bearers or
ayahs watch, and what detailed accounts they could and do give of their
masters' or mistresses' love affairs, great and small, legitimate and
illegitimate.
It is to be surmised that they do _not_!
They were not the eyes of the nimble little bearer that were watching
from the bathroom on this particular night, when Leonie very quietly
raised herself in her sleep and, flinging back the netting, sat staring
silently into the corner nearest the door.
She half knelt, half sat, with a faint look of surprise on her face,
which changed slowly to absolute amazement, then to the faintest
suspicion of love and happiness, during which transition her smile
reflected the glorious lights of the seventh heaven.
"Oh, beloved!" she exclaimed, and laughed softly, the sound falling
eerily in the absolute stillness of the night, the shadows dancing
eerily upon the plaster walls as she threw out her arms.
She flung them out in a beautiful abandonment of love, and the hidden
eyes glistened as they watched the fingers slowly curl and clench as a
look of horror crept gradually over the whole face, blotting out its
sweetness and light, changing it into a veritable mask of terror.
A horrible dream! A nightmare!
If you like! The label of casual explanation, tied by the string of
ignorance, never did much harm to any psychological package.
Leonie was apparently asleep and evidently seeing things, so perforce
she must have been dreaming, for what else _could_ she have been doing!
Anyway her heavy, unrefreshing sleep, induced by fatigue, mental
weariness, or a super-will, was very gradually being turned into a
thing of moving shapes.
The shadows in the corner had lightened and darkened and lightened
again, lifting at last to show a half-ruined, roofless room and a
banyan tree outside an almost perfect archway.
A wick in a coarse earthenware saucer flickered feebly in one corner,
two deer pattered swiftly across the flags and out of the door, and
very slowly a man jerked himself on to his knees and twisted his
death-white face towards the coming dawn.
Jan Cuxson suffering the tortures of the damned, chained by his
rashness and his love to a ring in the wall with thongs of raw hide,
which were drawing blood from his wrists and staining his shirt about
his waist.
This way and that he wrenched and tore, then stopped quite still
glaring into the shadows.
This way and that again, hurling himself back, against the wall,
flinging himself forward until the agony of the thongs seemed to be
beyond all human endurance.
Just for one ghastly instant, one second, he stopped, staring straight
into the eyes of his beloved, seeming to call insistently for help, his
face distorted until it lost all human semblance; then pitched forward,
hanging unconscious upon the thongs just as a priest, thin and gaunt,
with knife gleaming in his hand, rushed towards him; and Leonie, with a
piercing shriek, sprang straight out of bed, flung herself violently
against the wall, and woke up with her hands feebly groping over the
coloured plaster.
And next evening the news that Lady Hickle had left the hotel without
her luggage, destination unknown, streaked like lightning through the
almost deserted Chowringhee, the Strand Road, the Maidan, and clubs and
bungalows.
What a godsend is a bit of gossip in the hot weather, when your
neighbour's looks, wardrobe, and morals have been threshed bare; when
the mail has not arrived; and the hill news has only served to upset
your temperamental digestion; in fact there were little whirlpools of
excitement in the Saturday Club's stifling atmosphere, serving to add a
passing zest to the heat-stricken evening hours and pegs which no
amount of ice seemed to cool.
Every man, high or low caste, white or not, who met Leonie,
figuratively cast himself at her slender feet.
Men ran to do her service, they smiled in doing it, they mopped their
heated brows and cheered up, even at one hundred and two in the shade,
when she happened along to ask some good office with a smile on her red
mouth.
She had paid her outrageous bill, left orders concerning her outrageous
luggage, and walked out of the hotel almost unnoticed, because of the
witchery of her most gracious manner which served to make her path
easy--where men were concerned of course; and without let or hindrance
she had cashed an outrageous cheque at her bank which left a few rupees
to her credit, and had walked through the building to give orders as to
her mail, and ask advice of the fair-haired, courteous young Englishman
who rose from his table as she turned away with the sweetest words of
thanks for the trouble he had taken in finding out for her how to get
quickly to the Sunderbunds.
"I wonder why she's going there, of all places, in this infernal heat,
and in such a desperate hurry, and I wonder if she's going alone!" he
said half aloud as he drew beetles on his blotting-paper, and frowned
as somebody, breathless from heat, sank heavily into the chair on the
other side and slapped some documents on to the table.
Leonie was acting quite subconsciously in all she did on that blazing
morning.
Which does not mean that she was still walking in her sleep with her
eyes wide open, or that she was not aware of her own movements.
Not at all. She was wide awake with a fixed determination to get to
the temple in the Sunderbunds as quickly as she could.
Why?--well, who knows?
As far as the dream was concerned her mind had been a perfect blank
when she had awakened the previous night groping over the plastered
walls; but branded across it, in letters of blood, had been the one
word Sunderbunds, standing out clearly against the fog which surrounded
something terrible she could not understand. No, she did not
understand, but she knew that everywhere she looked she saw the
lettering; and that every sound she heard, the soft slur of the lift,
the throb of the motor engine, the call of the indefatigable kite,
cried the one word aloud; and that in some inexplicable way the
resistless summons was connected with the man she loved.
What was she to know of the working of an eastern mind in the secret
places of a Hindu temple?
Neither did it strike her as strange that a taxi, with its flag up for
hire, should be standing opposite the bank door, blocking the way for
arriving vehicles; or that, having persistently refused many irate
would-be hirers, and patiently listened to the asperity of their
remarks, the driver should have opened the door and held it back as she
walked straight across the pavement, got in, and, without hesitating
gave the address of the Whiteway Laidlaw Company.
It might have seemed odd to a stranger; still more odd would it have
appeared to any chance passer-by if they had overheard the following
short conversation as Leonie got out at the shop.
"Can you drive me afterwards to Kulna?" she asked in her best but
inefficient Hindustani.
"Even so, mem-sahib," promptly replied the lithe, good-looking son of
the East as he salaamed. "If the mem-sahib will pardon her servant he
would advise driving to Jessore and resting the night there at the dâk
bungalow, that is if the mem-sahib is not in too great haste!"
Leonie frowned, only understanding half of what was said.
"Don't you speak English?"
"No, mem-sahib; but my brother, who lives near the New Market but a
minute's drive from here, speaks the mem-sahib's language. Also, he is
a good bearer, having travelled widely. If the mem-sahib permits, I
will call him to accompany her on her journey to Jessore."
"Very well!" said Leonie, beckoning to a boy, who sprang towards her
with a huge basket which, for a few annas, he would carry round the
entire building after her, and into which she would throw her purchases
of all sizes and shapes.
He emerged some time later jubilantly staggering with basket and hands
full.
What a priceless mem-sahib who had not once complained about the price!
The brother had materialised! Oh, those brothers and fathers, and
mothers and sisters, and all those relations who are always so
strangely near at hand in India!
"If I may offer a suggestion," said the soft voice in the delightfully
choice English of the educated native of India who has sojourned in
England, "it would be that we drive only to Jessore, stopping at
Bongong dâk bungalow for tiffin. If the mem-sahib is sight-seeing, I
will arrange everything in the most convenient and pleasant manner for
her. From here to Kulna in one day would be a long and wearisome
journey in this great heat."
Leonie half turned with the slightest frown as she passed her hand over
her eyes.
Once again had come that suggestion of something familiar--a suggestion
too fleeting to be caught.
"You can do exactly as you think best as long as I start for the
Sunderbunds to-morrow morning."
"The public boat does not start for three days, mem-sahib."
"I can hire a private launch, can I not? Money is no object, only
speed."
"Easily, mem-sahib. Consider it arranged!"
Leonie lifted her head for half a second, showing her face deathly
white, the crimson line of her beautiful mouth and the shadow-encircled
eyes emphasised by the dark green silk lining of her topee.
She glanced quickly at the dignified figure beside her on the pavement
and looked away.
You do not, as a rule, recognise people you have met in your sleep;
neither had her memory been impressed with the passing glimpses she had
caught of the handsome face in the British Museum and during the
_chotar shikar_.
No, in spite of the tugging of her memory, there was nothing to link
this person in the spotless white turban and full-skirted coat of the
bearer to her fastidious self.
Neither did that strange anonymous gift of glorious pearls which was
round her neck even then, or an unaccounted for mark upon her shoulder,
help her in any way.
She leaned back listlessly as her newly acquired bearer arranged the
newly bought suit-case and the various packages.
It was an absurd way of starting out on a jungle trip, picking up a car
any old how out of the streets, and a bearer from the labyrinths of the
bazaar without even glancing at his chits, which, even it she had,
would probably have been forgeries.
She had certainly had the sense to put on her knee-high boots and
knee-length skirt, a low collared shirt waist and sports coat, also a
topee; but, wishing to leave no clue as to her future movements at the
hotel, she had slung everything else pell-mell into her trunks, locked
and left them to be fetched and stored at her bank.
It had obviated the calling of a car and the giving of an address to
the hall porter, but it had forced her to buy everything she might be
likely to require for a day or two's sojourn in the waste places of an
Indian jungle.
She had thought of everything with one exception, and that, of course,
the one item which should have been the most important on the list.
Of weapons of defence she had none.
But then, what was she to know of the workings of the mind of the man
sitting with his back to her as the car turned and sped swiftly down
the streets, which seem to stretch endlessly, until you strike the
heavenly tree-lined road which leads you through Dum Dum and other
well-known places to the river edge.